


Snowfall

by Osmosian



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Car Accidents, Character Death, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied Slash, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 22:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Osmosian/pseuds/Osmosian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When at last she was in the ground, and the oak shield she wore had disappeared, Grantaire thought on how she had always hated winter. How in high school she had made herself throw up only so she could spend the days of snow in her home, and how she laughed when Grantaire came in with a skinned knee or elbow because he had fell in the white."</p><p>Abelina is buried in the winter, and with her, so is some part of Grantaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowfall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DVwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DVwrites/gifts).



> I just randomly picked names for Grantaire's family, so if it's different than your head cannon, or what you've read or whatever, don't worry about it, and I'm sorry!
> 
> Dedicated to Xantia, who is the Enjolras to my Grantaire, and who I love as deeply as he does.

The buzz from the alcohol hadn’t even worn off.

That was how fast it had happened: Exiting the pub, opening the car door and sliding inside- a maximum of a minute. Although perhaps it had been longer, since no doubt time was different in the mind of a drunkard, and a drunkard’s drunk sister.

What had they been talking about? Perhaps it was how Abelina had neglected to pause at a set of traffic lights. Maybe they had thrown their heads back and laughed, and been merry from the drink they’d consumed. And maybe Abelina had gripped Grantaire’s hand, and said that they should have some brother and sister time again, because they had never done it often enough. Once again, however, Grantaire had put off asking her how she was, because he was afraid of the answer. And Abelina herself forgot to ask how Grantaire was, because she already knew the answer. She knew by the way he drank shots like he was drinking pills, and by the way he sucked at cigarettes as if consuming more would bring about fatality all the more sooner. But she also saw the sick part of him that was happy in his suffering, as if who he loved stopped him from deserving anything better.

These were conversations they didn’t have, on that quick drive. Instead they complained of the cold and asked each other what they would do, with Christmas around the corner, and planned to exchange presents later that week. Both of them knew that it wouldn’t have happened. It was comforting, perhaps, to make plans with each other that would eventually break. And no doubt that the number Grantaire had given her would have been lost conveniently when they had parted ways, because life was better without her brother in it, and everybody knew this. Perhaps it had been written on the stone tablet all those years ago, when Noah, or Jeremiah or somebody had stood on that rock and lifted his palms high.

But within these hidden conversations, and the surety of separation, there was happiness. For a while. It seemed to mock him, as he lay on those crisp sheets, washed with too much starch. Strange to be lying in a bed, when his body felt as if it were still underneath a vehicle.

As he said before, it was a matter of minutes. A minute after sliding into their seats, they had passed the red light. Another minute later and the half-finished wine bottle had fell from Grantaire’s drunken grasp, and tumbled to the floor. Abelina had laughed, but continued on, the bottle rolling unchecked. Two minutes were enough to have her blurry vision misjudge the distance of a turning truck, and for the bottle to have found respite beneath the needed brake pedal.

Of course, minutes died there, and clawed at Grantaire’s clock as hours. Months. In December Abelina sat upside down in her crushed car, her eyes moving rapidly beneath her lids, as her brother woke beside her. No doubt they got to the hospital sometime in April, when spring and new life caressed the ground. But when Grantaire woke again in the starchy bed it was December again, and everything was dark and frozen and hateful, like the cold wires that clasped his arm, or his Mother who sat beside him because she was not allowed in the operating theatre, and she would never assume to sit in the waiting room to have other’s judge her for not being with her son.

Perhaps his drug addled brain was too harsh. In guilt he placed his hand on his mother’s shoulder, who shrugged it off.

“So you’re awake?” Her words were sharp, although the red pressed against her eyes like a hidden shield that was cracked and shrouded in the shame of a lost battle. He wondered if he had been the cause of those tears, although no doubt she had not cried for him since the post-natal depression of his young years.

“’Lina…” Grantaire wasn’t sure if he had uttered the word, or if it simply echoed around his head like a prayer did in church. He attempted to touch her face, which still held onto the feint tracks of salt water, but she once again recoiled, as if the very notion of him touching her was offensive.

“Abelina is in the operating theatre. They say that…” Here she paused, and looked down towards her hands that were folded in her lap.

“They say that they’re going to try their best to save her,” A large man uttered from beside the window across the room, turning towards the others. He sucked on a thick cigar, obviously unable to heed the no smoking sign beside him. “For all the good that’ll do her.” The woman looked up at him with something akin to hate in her eyes. Grantaire had never seen any emotion playing across his mother’s features, especially not anger. Usually she was so composed, so folded together as if she were the hands in her lap, neat and perfect, so different from her children.

“You…” Grantaire cleared his throat, which held the remnants of panic caused by his mother’s reaction. “You can’t smoke in here, Sir.”

“And who’s going to stop me? Are you, my lad, with your concussion and broken arm?” A laugh formed in the cigar smoke and stained the sterile environment surrounding them.

“Please, Marcel.” Here she was, this strong woman, sounding so weak and hurt and clutching her hands so hard that her nails left imprints on her knuckles. Grantaire wanted to be those imprints, just so that he may hold her for a moment.

The room fell silent once again, until the click of an opening door roused them from their individual musings. His father crossed his arms across his large chest, no doubt expecting to be told to put out the cigar that hung from his lips, and showing that he was immovable. However, the doctor simply frowned at him for a moment, pressing his lips into a thin line.

Perhaps it was the doctor’s reaction to the cigar that told him. Or perhaps it was how she looked between the people in the room steadily for a few silent moments. Although even when she muttered the soft “I’m sorry”, he wasn’t sure that she meant it. At any moment Lina would jump out from a cupboard and yell ‘surprise’, and his mother and her favourite child would embrace, and his father would laugh that smoky laugh. And they’d all tell Grantaire how badly he was going through life, and how he needed to buckle up and stop seeing that group of friends of his, because that Enjolras would bring him down. And then everything would be fine, and he’d be the screw-up brother, not the screw-up only child, because she wasn’t really dead, right?

He wondered how long he’d been following that train of thought, and mentally wondering which of the cupboards would be big enough for her, and wondering if his parents were in on the joke, or she had simply sneaked past when they went to get refreshments and when he had slept. It must have been a while, because he woke up to a light shining in his eyes and a room absent of his parents but occupied by a nurse and him. The nurse, who was currently still unaware that he was awake and checking his pupils, gasped and stumbled when Grantaire gripped her arm, and blinked away the spots that formed due to the light in his eyes.

“Have…have I missed the joke?” The words felt like razor blades against his dry throat, and his lips cracked with the effort of it.

The nurse frowned, pulling her arm out of his grip and checking the chart that sat at the end of the bed. She studied it, before placing it down again. “Well, Sir, as soon as we make sure that your head’s okay, you’ll be able to go home. Just be careful with that arm, okay? It got pretty banged about.” She smiled at him softly, carefully watching for any other erratic actions.

“Where…” He coughed, sitting up. She quickly stepped beside him, allowing him to lean on her, and passing him a cup of water. It felt as if he hadn’t drank anything for weeks, and consumed the liquid, and another two more cups in seconds. When he was finally sated, he attempted to converse once again. “Where are my parents? They…were here.”

The nurse shifted uncomfortably beneath his gaze, her smile looking a little more forced. “They’ve…gone to say goodbye to your sister.”

So it was true. Really, was there any point in staying awake? Grantaire slept while the nurse spoke and told him that she was sorry for his loss.

 

* * *

 

They buried her in the snow, and when the sky was as grey as his mother’s fur scarf, which was as black as it could be without being unfashionable. Of course, that didn’t stop his mother’s friends from making remarks about it. They giggled from their corners of people who didn’t know the deceased, where they referred to her as ‘that poor girl’ or ‘Marionette’s daughter’, because none of them could fit her name amongst the names of all of their lovers that they kept hidden from their husbands. At another time his name would have been clawed out as they were fucked against pool sides and deck chairs, should they have simply been blonde enough. 

But here he despised them, and he wished with anything that he had that they were the ones that had been crammed into a coffin. Perhaps the only thing he wanted more was that he was the one inside the coffin. He wondered if these fakers would have arrived then, just as they did now, or if his mother would have even shown her face, with her designer pencil skirt and blazer, or even his father who smoked more than a chimney and was being frowned at by the priest.

The same priest glared at him when Grantaire had laughed during prayers, because how could be believe in God now, if he ever had, and because Abeline would have laughed too. Grantaire was maybe the only person in the entire church who knew her, truly. How awfully lonely she must have been. No wonder she had wrote a novel of goodbye notes. Nobody knew about them either. Not even her ‘loving’ husband, whose hands had been used more often in anger than in love.

When at last she was in the ground, and the oak shield she wore had disappeared, Grantaire thought on how she had always hated winter. How in high school she had made herself throw up only so she could spend the days of snow in her home, and how she laughed when Grantaire came in with a skinned knee or elbow because he had fell in the white. And how she had questioned him when he came in only to have the wound cleaned and dressed before leaving. How could Grantaire love something that hurt him so often? It was funny how that question had been repeated so often through his lifetime and her own; from the snow, to when a teenaged Grantaire came home professing love, and described how the blonde had rescued him from a bully like his Prince Charming, and his father had beaten him black and blue with his belt, because no son of his would love another man.

A moment after she was gone, Grantaire found himself beside his mother, who looked perfect. There was no trace of the grieving mother beside his hospital bed, and replaced only by a lioness with no cubs. His head lifted from the mound of dirt before him, and met his mother’s gaze, which froze more than the melting snowflakes that touched the very cuffs of his sleeves.

“I need you.” He said the words almost before he registered his moving mouth. There was silence once again, and her expression never even changed before she replied “And I need my daughter,” and walked away.

 


End file.
